Conservatives have noticed that the Pentagon is firing officers left and right, with many leaving under an embarrassing cloud. The question they ask  and I don't know that anyone has an answer  is whether these firings are the legitimate and appropriate housecleaning that a sclerotic bureaucracy needs or whether they're a purge, with Obama's New Age, gender flexible, fighting optional military getting rid of people in command positions who actually think that the military's job is to wage war in America's defense.

All I know is that the latest person being investigated as a predicate to an inevitable firing is someone I've actually met. Back in October 2009, I got the opportunity to attend a party that had, as its guests, members of the Blue Angels. I wrote about it here. I also included a photograph I took of all the guys (plus two gals) lined up:

Please take special notice of the guy in the center (or more accurately, sixth from the left). We spent a few minutes speaking with him and found him to be  as all these officers were  personable, intelligent, and respectful.

A former commanding officer of the U.S. Navy's flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, has been removed from his current post after accusations that he tolerated an inappropriate work environment.

Capt. Gregory McWherter allowed, and in some cases encouraged, sexually explicit humor and inappropriate comments among members of the famed precision flying team, the U.S. Navy contended on Wednesday.

McWherter was relieved of duty as executive officer of Naval Base Coronado on Friday after a complaint was filed with the Navy's inspector general about an inappropriate command climate at the Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

During his two stints as Blue Angels leader between 2008 and 2012, McWherter tolerated an inappropriate work environment within the squadron which may have violated the Navy's sexual harassment, hazing and equal opportunity policies, a Navy statement said.

The complaint alleges that lewd speech, inappropriate comments, and sexually explicit humor were allowed in the workplace and in some case encouraged by the commanding officer, and that pornographic images were displayed in the workplace and shared in electronic communications, the statement said.

Significantly, McWherter got a strong vote of support from a woman who served under his command:

"At one point there was a command survey and one came back that men didn't treat women fairly," Melinda Cary, who served under McWherter during 2006 to 2008, told The News Journal.

"The first thing he did was bring us to talk about who was telling jokes. And he went out, and, I guess, set them straight. He followed up and made sure we weren't still having trouble."

Maybe McWherter is a sexist pig who ought never to have been allowed a command. Or maybe he's an old-fashioned warrior who is making too much trouble in a modern military determined to serve as a giant Leftist social experiment, rather than hewing to its traditional responsibility as America's protector.

"Thats amusing, and inclines me strongly to believe its all BS. That mealy-mouthed collection of weasel words, inappropriate work environment is exactly what the Navy said about why Admiral Chuck Gaouette was relieved, too. (When they finally said anything, months after the fact.) Nobody ever really knows what it means but it sounds like something pretty serious. (Or I guess its supposed to. To me it sounds like what I said: mealy-mouthed BS.)

Gaouette, (whom I would know if I fell over, as he would know me), always struck me as among the softest-spoken people around. The only negative opinion he ever mentioned to me about anything was about the Canadian navy, with which he is not impressed. (Three rowboats, seven canoes, and eleven kayaks.) He was accused, in a roundabout way (within the parameters of the mealy-mouthed BS), of being a sort of closet racist in his conduct, in those same terms McWherter was accused of excessively liking girls. (If thats what the mealy-mouthed BS about sexual misconduct amounts to.) McWherters work environment evidently permitted dirty jokes; Gaouettes maybe permitted watermelon jokes. I never saw Gaouette on the bridge of anything he commanded, or on the admirals bridge of Stennis in charge of a battle group, maybe the mans an animal at sea; but my experience of him would add up to: not bloody likely.

(To move off point for a moment. I have read in more than one place that he was fired  which is what it amounts to  for being a little too aggressively inclined to go do something about events as they transpired that night in Benghazi. This is incorrect: Stennis, her planes, and battle group were at the time well out of range to the east, and couldnt have done anything even had their commander strenuously wished to do so. They were in transit, and were over halfway to their Mid-east station from Bremerton, but not that much more than halfway there. F/A-18s need a lot of help to operate thousands of miles from their home deck, and therefore mostly dont operate at that sort of range. There were plenty of assets a good deal closer  which Chuck, commander of the group, knew perfectly well. Now, I suppose its entirely possible he rang up the Pentagon and said something like, what the f**k is wrong with you ass****s, why arent we doing something? which might have gotten him in trouble with Madame Fat-ass and her minions, but that would be his only relationship to Benghazi: talking about it. And probably a good deal more temperately than I just did. But talking about things, no mistake, can be a sin in the military.)

(And to digress onto another issue about which Ive been asked: I was raised better than that. Hes never seen fit to bring it up, so you may safely bet that Ive never brought it up. And I will not bring it up, have not asked, and will not ask why the Navy did what it did to him.)

I dont know what the Navy wants to be, and am fairly certain the Navy doesnt know what it wants to be, either. I come down in several ways on this myself, but my ultimate goal is that I want a Navy that can kick the ass of every other navy on the planet, and maybe be able to do it to more than one of them  like Russia and China, when that becomes, as it inevitably will, necessary  simultaneously. I do not, in other words, give one good g-ddam what somebody whos good at that job  it is the only job - makes jokes about. I dont care if theyre funny jokes, off-putting jokes, or sick jokes: I just want him to put his bombs on target. I dont care if hes a sexist pig. I dont care what he thinks about Jesse Jackass. I dont care what he thinks about Jugears or Fat-ass. All that does not have a thing to do with how well he drives his plane.

And the Navy better pull its collective head out and decide what its doing. Im with Norman Schwarzkopf: you have a military to kill people and break things. Thats what they do. And it should be all they do, and they should be left alone to develop the means to do it as efficiently as possible. Political correctness doesnt enter into it. They are not a social experiment, as democrats seem never to understand. (With one exception: June 24, 1940, when republicans voted to integrate the armed forces. Roosevelt wouldnt do it, it had to wait until 1952 when Truman could get the credit.) Why we persist in treating them as a social experiment I dont know, but every time we engage in some such BS all we accomplish is to degrade the forces, and eliminate very good people, and we do so all in the witless interests of political correctness."

Conservatives have noticed that the Pentagon is firing officers left and right,

Oh brother what a stupid sentence. Conservatives are not stupid. They know that firings have been taking place since 1776. You do something stupid, you get fired. I have not heard of one firing where I said to myself that they didn’t deserve to be shown the door. Writers certainly try to make conservatives look like idiots.

2
posted on 04/24/2014 12:18:33 PM PDT
by napscoordinator
( Santorum-Bachmann 2016 for the future of the country!)

Military leadership at the top levels is lacking, IMHO. We have created and promoted a generation or two of wussies. There are exceptions, of course, but they will be swept aside. We have a chance or two on the horizon to put a fix in place but I’m unsure if there are enough cojones available.

Elvis is a totally good dude. I've never heard anything negative about him, including from women that served with him. I've spent plenty of hours in the club with the guy and I don't even remember him using much foul language.

He was on staff when I went through Top Gun. Back then they had some guys that formed a band and he used to do an Elvis set with them that was pretty funny.

· General David Petraeus-Director of CIA from September 2011 to November 2012 & U.S. Army Commander International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] and Commander U.S. Forces Afghanistan [USFOR-A] (Nov 2012)

Im with Norman Schwarzkopf: you have a military to kill people and break things. Thats what they do. And it should be all they do, and they should be left alone to develop the means to do it as efficiently as possible.

I’ve thought there was a purge going on for some time. There appears to be two types of purge. One is ideological. You get rid of those who see the world differently than you. The other is to maintain a degree of fear so that others will do whatever you want for fear of losing their job or reputation or benefits.

I’d say there’s a third type, political. I recall a captain of the (as I recall) USS Enterprise. One of the 5,000 sailors on board was accused of raping a Japanese woman. They fired the captain. I’m fairly certain that he’d probably never seen the man who allegedly committed the rape and I can’t conceive of how he’d have stopped it. I’d say that was just the US wanting to say to the Japanese people how sorry they were. But there went an experienced and probably quite good officer for no good reason.

So you think McWherter is guilty of allowing lewd talk and porn images in email and in someone’s locker? I have only read one thing negative about the guy, and it is from a leaked email from some Navy brass. All personal accounts from folks under his command have given him the highest praise. Numerous women who called him “Boss” have written that he was the best boss they ever had. That he took care of their issues. So when you read about him, did you think he deserved to be removed from his latest command assignment? Or are you waiting for more info from the lone accuser whose sensibilities were bruised while working for the number one Navy recruiter in the world?

“...You do something stupid, you get fired. I have not heard of one firing where I said to myself that they didnt deserve to be shown the door....”
*********************************************************************

Wow!! You have either lived a particularly sheltered life or you’re just defending the ongoing “soft” purge of the military.

There are not many in the last 50-70 years who are actually worthy of the term “leader”. Most senior officers I knew including contemporaries of mine who made it that far up the ladder are political animals first and foremost. On these forums I advocated in 2000 that Bush fire most of the senior leadership starting with the JCS. Too many Clinton appointees were left in place. Colon Bowel is a prime example of this type.

Maybe the kenyan is going about a purge, it is hard to tell in some cases but in others it seems almost clear that it is a political purge. Democrat presidents have a bad habit of doing this.

19
posted on 04/24/2014 12:48:08 PM PDT
by RJS1950
(The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)

This administration wants a military that will shoot American civilians without hesitation. All military personnel will be female, gay, black, Mexicans, Asians and Non-Christians. When the time comes these people will happily shoot and probably torture any opposition to governmental mandates.

24
posted on 04/24/2014 12:59:21 PM PDT
by AEMILIUS PAULUS
(It is a shame that when these people give a riot)

“Capt. Gregory McWherter allowed, and in some cases encouraged, sexually explicit humor and inappropriate comments among members of the famed precision flying team, the U.S. Navy contended on Wednesday.”

For whatever it is worth, I hear sexually explicit humor and inappropriate comments all the time here in the senior citizens home, from very prim and proper elderly conservative christian folk.

Such humor is a stress reliever from the aches, pains, and mobility issues, giving everyone a break from the frailties of elder hood and infirmity.

For those in the military, I would think it fills a similar need - a break from the tedium of constant training, hours of boredom, then moments of sheer tension and terror.

What the heck is wrong with off color jokes, innuendo, and inappropriate comments in the military. It isn’t exactly a Baptist church, you know.

26
posted on 04/24/2014 1:06:10 PM PDT
by jacquej
("It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.")

You’re right. Everyone knows that they are awesome bosses, easy to get along with as coworkers, and super soldiers. It’s only me that thinks that/ it was probably a man who complained on that blue Angel leader. Feel better now?

29
posted on 04/24/2014 1:22:59 PM PDT
by DesertRhino
(I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)

And I’d like to hear your mommy explain to us if she ever saw sexual innuendo in WWII nose art, saw a pin up girl or was aware of them, or if all the men in WWII never chased women back then. Get real.

30
posted on 04/24/2014 1:37:03 PM PDT
by DesertRhino
(I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)

Sexual misconduct is going on in the military and it gives the Penatgon leadership, supported by the White House and the Republicans in Congress who have all expressed outrage at it in recent years, the rationale for sweeping action that’s over the top.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.